First edition · 2026
The CEE Engineering Leadership Benchmark.
Ask what a healthy engineering org looks like and every answer you find was measured in California or London. We checked on 2026-08-21: for Central and Eastern Europe there are salary aggregators and nothing else. No data on how orgs here are shaped, how far AI adoption has really moved, or what sits between an engineering manager and a CTO in a Prague scale-up. So we are building the ruler, starting with the 2026 edition.
What the benchmark measures
- Org design. Spans of control, layers, the manager-to-senior-IC ratio, where platform teams appear, by company stage and size.
- AI-adoption maturity. Not vendor survey optimism: what engineering orgs in CEE have really shipped with AI, by stage, and what changed in their team shape because of it.
- Leadership structure. Which leadership roles exist in CZ, SK and PL orgs, what they own, and where the ladders end, building on the title census of the member base.
Deliberately not compensation. Pay is the one dimension the aggregators already cover; org shape is the one nobody does.
Who should take part
Engineering leaders running orgs in Central and Eastern Europe, from a 10-person startup to a 500-engineer site. One questionnaire per company, about 15 minutes when it opens. Participants get the full report before public release plus their own org plotted against the benchmark, which is the part a public PDF can never give you.
Results are presented on stage at the ELC Conference in April 2027 and published here. Write weare@engineeringleaders.io with subject Benchmark 2026 and you are in the panel for the first edition.
Frequently asked questions
Is my company data anonymous?
Yes. Results publish as aggregates only: by company stage, by country, by org size band. No company is identifiable in the report, and raw responses are never shared, sold or shown to partners.
Why does the benchmark not cover salaries?
Because salary data is the one thing that already exists: levels.fyi, TalentUp and the aggregators cover pay. Nobody covers how CEE engineering orgs are shaped, how far AI adoption has really moved by company stage, and what leadership structures look like here. We measure the part with no ruler.
When do the results come out?
Responses are collected through 2026 and early 2027. The report is presented at the ELC Conference in April 2027 and published on this page, free.
Who runs the benchmark?
The Engineering Leaders Community: 3,200+ engineering leaders across Prague, Brno, Bratislava and Kraków. The same counting discipline behind the statistics page applies here: methodology named, numbers rounded down, verification dates on everything.